


something bright, then holes

by magic_ramen



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M, One Word Prompts, One sentence prompts, this is just a gay mess ya'll
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 03:17:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14728940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magic_ramen/pseuds/magic_ramen
Summary: In the arrival of night sleep did not come to lay claim to his body but, in the late hours of winter, it wasn’t sleep that Bard wished would take him.





	something bright, then holes

**Author's Note:**

> just two kings chilling 5 inches apart in a tent bc they're hella gay

81\. [nowhere]  
‘neath the children’s cries rolled the water of the lake as it boiled, so Bard's only rest was brief; even if Smaug now lay at the bottom of his desolation, he still breathed in dreams.

17\. [flee]  
\- the debris drifted ashore and the current gently rocked the bodies, charred and torn, like infants to sleep.

32\. [sun]  
_Nothing gets past me_ , and _nothing indeed_ , for what was an armed host at the door of this people but death with another name?

48\. [match]  
Bard gleaned nothing that told him when they had come so he swallowed the rebuke in his throat because even if he had been awake the likes of Alfrid had not the eyes to know when to mind the dead.

6\. [engage]  
\- in a foreign place they were born but he knew them, and from whose halls they had come, sent in their gilded gold to wed death in the sweet dances of war.

144\. [liar]  
They would all hear _I’m no king_ but none heeded him because the spears of the elves had shown him deference, and who else but the old blood had any claims now?

72\. [anomaly]  
All who lived on the Lake knew of the great beauty of the king in the trees but Bard understood better that day that the tongues of men would fall eternally short when they recalled the radiance of a star fallen in winter.

124\. [vision]  
“ _My lord Thranduil, we did not look to see you here_ ,” because even children knew that the moon belonged in the sky, and Bard wondered if Smaug had thought to hoard for himself this jewel that was kin to the sun.

340\. [priorities]  
“ _I did not come on your behalf_ ,” it was possible, yet he had saved them with his wagons so the bowman remained unsure of just whose benefit those words were really for.

76\. [majestic]  
He had expected to be welcomed by the histrionics of the Master of the Lake; there stood one with Girion’s bearing, though with ash for a crown, but Thranduil knew all gems to be this way when first pulled from the earth.

213\. [survival]  
Alfrid retreated to the dark of the ruins - whether from the king with the edged eyes or the one yet uncrowned he wasn’t sure, but there was a light that bloomed from their proximity that was not the glow of gold and he could not stomach it.

148\. [impulsive]  
There was only so much blame Thranduil could lay on the wine for the way his eyes wandered but the Istari was responsible for what he bore witness to, choosing that moment to interfere.

2\. [glitter]  
“ _I came to reclaim something of mine_ ,” and Bard could not divine what starlight itself wanted with gems that would dull in shame before beauty incarnate.

135\. [in-between]  
The first steps of Father Winter echoed now in their halls but Bard kept warm often without furs, preferring Thranduil’s wine humming through his blood and his white lust blooming within him.

27\. [book]  
The wizard hadn’t spent the ages of men with his face buried in tomes to be told that he knew not of what he spoke, though he hadn’t known that to ever stop anyone from saying so; desire was not so new a thing as they fancied it to be.

111\. [metamorphosis]  
In Dale rebuilt, thrice its glory of old, was its king, resplendent in scarlet and gold to the vindication of Thranduil, who had beheld Bard’s glow under the doubt of others and now shared the view with the kingdoms of men.

319\. [mountain]  
A lifetime living in its shadow had not prepared Bard for its heart to be so small a thing that it could be whisked away in the pocket of a halfling, nor sit in his own; it was light for something that crushed hopes and dreams under its weight.

23\. [magnetic]  
Bard’s protests at the loss of his favored bargeman’s coat were feeble, but the cries of his body at the loss of Thranduil’s touch were greater, for he felt its absence then like the impact of an arrow.

280\. [bridge]  
Thranduil swallowed this new longing down with his wine but it bloomed in the soil of his blood, as if one could drown a seed, as if he could suffocate the want to take the melancholy from his ally and leave something else deep within him.

22\. [words]  
At orders given in silence did the forces of Mirkwood aim at the company on the wall; and Gandalf saw now that a mere look could do the same, bringing numbers a mortal did not command to rest.

56\. [move]  
“ _Long will I tarry_ ,” and he did, past war and into peace, leaving Gandalf to wonder if Bard could see why the Elvenking tarried now.

240\. [leaves]  
They said that he had turned to stone there, keeping his vigil over the last one who had held his heart; Tauriel turned away, unable to stand him like this, frozen eternal in his surrender to neither life or death.

134\. [missing]  
The halfling had taken the dwarves out from under his guards but the bowman across the tent was stealing his attention and would be walking away with his heart before long and Thranduil couldn’t be sure which was the greater offense.

17\. [cadence]  
He followed the pulse of troop movements through the ruined streets as to declare himself an ally to the woodland realm, and the knowledge that the Elvenking meant to greet war there took the light from his eyes.

85\. [power]  
“ _You have nothing_ ,” Thorin swore between his fortress walls yet all present understood with a terrible clarity that the birthright of a king held for ransom was a cost more than _nothing_.

131\. [threat]  
Bard’s eyes were the shades of earthen halls and the bark of beloved trees that grew to weather all, and Thranduil found himself lost with no way out but in.

254\. [heavy]  
Enduring though his father was Legolas knew that Thranduil would falter at the gaping maw of an eternity without his bowman; one was only truly immortal if one evaded the embrace of death.

59\. [contraband]  
Not for the first time did Bard have to suppress the memory of smuggling Thorin Oakenshield up through his toilet because, while the reminder might have proved humbling, it _was_ bad politics.

18\. [asphyxiate]  
Happiness was a jewel oft stolen so Thranduil locked it away between his ribs and awaited the day it would be taken because that hour would come and it would be the fault of his heart for not staying in its cage where it belonged.

1\. [soliloquy]  
Elrond came to him again the way summer did, talking in his warm way about the last of the white ships, but in the end even his storms were lost on ears of stone.

88\. [fever]  
In the arrival of night sleep did not come to lay claim to his body but, in the late hours of winter, it wasn’t sleep that Bard wished would take him.

109\. [radiance]  
Thranduil’s beauty was matchless thus Bard felt the heirloom was wasted on himself, so he draped the golden net with set emeralds as numerous as the stars in the sky around the shoulders of one who had once dwelled there.

355\. [adapt]  
Bard looked as haggard and grim to Gandalf as any man with the burden of a nation settling in his spine though he had to agree with Thranduil then; the only weight that a king should ever appear to carry was in the gold of his station.

13\. [gold]  
Coin and flame alike brought naught but the voice of Smaug to Bard’s mind, taking all of the peace from his thoughts and the steadiness from his hands.

98\. [frozen]  
He had eyes that set frost upon the skin, reminding Bard of the damp of the Long Lake in winter when its cold pierced all, seeping through furs and making its home in bone.

55\. [conspiracy]  
Bard knew them to be true but he still borrowed Thranduil’s caution while in their midst; he’d sired three children and knew the look of mischief in the kindly Elrond and the wizard when he saw it.

274\. [staircase]  
He had ascended many a dais through the ages but paying tribute at the throne of the King of Dale, lacing wicked fingers between golden belts to quench his thirst, was Thranduil’s favorite climb.

90\. [revelation]  
Desperate to make him retreat Thranduil turned his terrible visage on the one he loved to save them both from this, because surely Bard would not want a heart so maimed; but in the stead of horror came only, “How can you still be so beautiful?”

38\. [burning]  
He knew best the wrath of dragons and their fires but in the nights he spent prone under a burning mouth and vulturine eyes seared even Smaug’s memory away.

199\. [tree]  
From the corners of his mind worry ate at Bilbo still; it helped him to eat when he took his little golden ring up into the trees of the Greenwood and heard no plots against his love from their allies.

326\. [abstract]  
Even if he was of noble stock it didn’t mean Bard had the words for how he knew peace this way; how did a bargeman tell a king that his arms were his glory and his heartbeat was now his home?

152\. [cloud]  
Lake-town had been gray, all fish oil and gloomy cold; now, when the sky brought its darkest silver, Bard knew that only wealth would come from the rain.

24\. [stars]  
He let them drip from his fingers, the white gems of Lasgalen, like spring dew from leaves, at long last; but he found their light was cold to him now, distant like the night sky and clay though Bard was, he was warm to him like the sun.

188\. [landscape]  
Thranduil traced delicate silver blades over the ink on maps and later, devoted fingertips to scouting the places Bard kept secret; in both the advantage was his.

4\. [stanza]  
Many things in Middle Earth had Gandalf held dear, but the way that the eyes of lovers sparkled like their betrothal rings at the altar gave him a joy that nothing else could hold a candle to.

200\. [willow]  
They say that long ago, a king on a great hill loved a king from the wood, and gave him a necklace of jewels beyond count - when the king died, the heart of the tree king stopped, too; they say that in the wood are their alabaster remains, where the forest king still holds his emeralds of fire.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the 2nd edition of my collection _[you're gonna carry that weight]_ , neurotically edited. It has been adjusted in detail to better accommodate these walking disasters.


End file.
